Building Creative Strategy Platform Synergies

Webinar Replay

June 14, 2023

Evan Lee

Head of Partnerships at Motion

Evan is a go-to source for how to turn creative insights into actionable growth for your paid ads. As the Head of Partnerships at Motion he has an inside look at the strategies and tactics of the world's most performant brands and agencies.

What you'll learn

Dive deep into integrating creative strategy with analytics for enhanced advertising performance. This session, ideal for creative strategists, media buyers, and marketing professionals, delves into the importance of aligning creative and analytical teams.

Key Takeaways

Utilizing Creative Strategy as a Bridge
Efficient Workflow for Creative Sprints
Leveraging Analytics for Creative Insights

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;09;19

Okay, Well, welcome to the party, folks. I'm excited everyone worked through the technical difficulties with me a little bit.

00;00;09;22 - 00;00;30;27

And now we're getting to the show here. So my name's Ivan. I'm the head of creative strategy of motion. For those who know me, Motion is the home for creative analytics and reporting plays super nicely before play. And you heard Marella talk about us a little bit earlier. And what I'm hoping to do today is ultimately tie a nice bow on what we're here to chat about and ultimately the platforms that can make this come to life.

00;00;30;29 - 00;00;51;03

So that's what I have going on. But before I get into the meat and potatoes here, I'm just curious who we have in the audience with us. So from a role perspective, you get a little bit a little bit of engagement going on. If these are any roles you hold that resonate, please toss them into the chat. If it's something else, let's see who else we have with us.

00;00;51;07 - 00;01;19;20

I'm always curious. Awesome. Craig Strategist in the house. Senior paid in the house. Awesome guys appreciate it. So a bit of housekeeping from my end just to make sure I think like the first thing I like to highlight is if you have any questions, please toss them into the chat. I'm going to get to them at the end, like what my team had mentioned.

00;01;19;22 - 00;01;40;17

And then if there's honestly, like anybody in the chat who has some answers, toss them in. Really, really excited to what you have to say. There's going to be a giveaway coming out. So motions also are taking in that don't want to miss out. And then on my end, Zach mentioned the recordings are going to be available. I'll make sure the decks available too so hopefully getting you all what you need at the end of the day.

00;01;40;20 - 00;01;59;02

And without further ado, let's get into things. So I'm excited to talk about how those platforms come together. But before we get into how the platforms can play nicely, I just want to set the stage a little bit. We've heard so many great details about creative strategy, and I just wanted to throw a definition of mine out there.

00;01;59;04 - 00;02;25;04

So when it comes to creative strategy, we ultimately know that creative is become the most important lever for success, especially when it comes to paid advertising. And what that means is that our performance teams and our creative teams need to literally sit hand in hand. But we also know is that our teams are more analytical and our creative teams are exactly that, more creative, and it almost creates this natural distance between teams that need to work in lockstep.

00;02;25;07 - 00;02;49;02

So When I'm referencing creative strategy, what I'm referencing here is ultimately the bridge between the two different teams. How can we create a workflow that allows them to consistently sit side by side? And what I'll be talking you through today is essentially this detailed workflow, whereas if you follow these steps, the goal is to consistently produce the best creative possible with everyone getting the love they have.

00;02;49;04 - 00;03;08;01

And I'll get into a ton of examples of how foreplay in motion can start to make this come to life for you. So that's the high level. Now, the second question I usually get is like, who manages this process At the end of the day, and you've heard throughout the day the word creative strategist title, creative strategist, and we've got folks in the audience who are creative strategist.

00;03;08;04 - 00;03;27;06

But what I also like to mention is creative strategy, depending on your org, can literally be a hat that you wear. So in this case, like I have a couple of different folks, Lauren Loft 3 to 5. As you can hear, we've talked about heels out today. Nicole holding it down as well as myself and all of us come from different career backgrounds.

00;03;27;07 - 00;04;02;02

Lauren's on to the design and is on the digital marketing side. Myself and Nicole are media buying backgrounds, so we can all put that hat on when it comes to creative strategy. But the big question to answer is like, Well, why is a creative strategist hat so important at the end of the day? Right. And why I like to highlight this one is I'm sure all of you have seen the amount of work that needs to go into producing some amazing performing, creative and usually what that means is there's a lot of people or teams who are involved, media buyers are going to care about the accounts brand Teams need to look at specific way.

00;04;02;05 - 00;04;31;21

Everybody has an opinion at the end of the day, and what the creative strategist is going to do is make sure that there's actions instead of meaningless findings and it's going to make sense of it and bring it all together nice and easily. So that's how this story ultimately starts to evolve. Okay, folks. And then with this process to make sure that we're aligned and the creative strategist is at the wheel here, you're going to hear me talk about this creative strategy workflow of research, ideation, so on and so forth.

00;04;31;23 - 00;04;52;24

Ultimately, as a creative sprint. So this is the process that you can run with with an agile dialog in mind. Now I'm covering a bunch of content content. So if you have questions, please throw them in. But when I'm talking about creative sprints, ultimately why we want to run these is because there's three main goals that we want to achieve that produce a specific output.

00;04;52;26 - 00;05;09;10

So the first goal is like, how do we determine and make a decision around what next creative we should make? We also want to get buy in from all of those different team members in mind, and we want to educate others along the way. So creative team members get a feel for it Management team. What's the look and feel that's crushing it?

00;05;09;13 - 00;05;31;13

And the output that comes from this is honestly efficiency, better creative output, and we all make some more dinero along the way at the end of the day. So this process will allow for this to happen. At the end of the day. And the first question that I have that's contained in this one here is in the way that I've described creative strategy, how many folks I'm assuming to create a strategy is definitely are.

00;05;31;15 - 00;06;04;06

But how many folks here are operating with creative strategy in mind at your organizations? Let me either get emojis when they get some. Yes is what we got in the chat for. Me So it is awesome team. I always wonder if I like. There you go. Thanks. They appreciate you Jay So on the down of course. Perfect. So with this workflow, I bring it up because I'm going to get to the detailed examples.

00;06;04;13 - 00;06;22;25

But the very first thing that I like to follow here is like when we talk about this creative sprint process, I like to put it into two buckets before we start to kick off. The first bucket is when it comes to new concepts and variations, and then the second bucket we focus on our iterations at the end of the day.

00;06;22;27 - 00;06;46;03

And when we're talking definitions to throw up against these, when I'm talking about new concepts, ultimately what I'm referring to are larger or larger tasks. So marketing calendar, Pride Product launches, campaigns, promos, all that good stuff, and they usually require on the output bucket, heavier briefing and research, heavier execution and a larger quantity. Creative assets. Those are new concepts.

00;06;46;05 - 00;07;08;10

When we're talking about variations, essentially what we're doing is we're taking that high level new concept and chopping it up. So what that might mean is like, let's say my concept and problem is like acne before and after 15 seconds I might have ads one, two and three with the same body and CTAs. The variations that I've completed are ultimately different hooks across the board.

00;07;08;13 - 00;07;39;03

And then that final bucket in definition is our iteration bucket. So iterations are all about leveraging our existing data to produce the best creative possible. And what that means is that it's later briefing in terms of its execution. It's very focused and it's going to be a lower quantity of creative assets that are produced. And by focusing on these 2 to 3 buckets, what you're left with is a sprint cycle that ultimately resembles something along these lines where you might say net new concepts are heavier lips.

00;07;39;03 - 00;07;56;08

So let's commit to a 30 day cadence where iterations are lot smaller. So let's commit to a shorter cadence. We can bring those out every 14 days at the end of the day. And the question that I usually get here is like, Evan, this looks so pretty, like I want this to come to life at my word. But how the heck do you do it now?

00;07;56;15 - 00;08;21;08

It's going to vary from brand to brand agency agency account to account. Everyone along the way. But I like to give two recommendations for the buckets of how this happens. So first, we have our testing and second, we have our creation. So our testing bucket is more of a shout out to our media buyers in all honesty. And usually what this means is like, how long do we need to be live in the ad account to spend an amount that we deem statistically relevant?

00;08;21;15 - 00;08;40;20

So that's the first question we want to answer. And then the second thing we can't forget, love to our creative folks here is that we want to have a handshake agreement for how long it takes, produce a creative asset at the end of the day. So that means new concept might be in that 14 to 45 day window or an iteration might actually be shorter.

00;08;40;20 - 00;09;05;03

So 3 to 10 days, something along those lines and we're agreeing along the way. And once you have these two things, figure it out in agreements internally. This is what allows you to actually this cadence that I've made so pretty right here, everybody. So that's the high level of when I talk about tying a bow on creative strategy on the steps, why it's important to the people involved.

00;09;05;06 - 00;09;24;00

Now, what want to start to do or get to the meat and potatoes here a little bit in the actual sprint and the individual steps. So when I'm looking at what I call like the creative strategy flywheel, each of these steps are so important when it comes to research, and you heard Sarah talk about it in depth like crazy today, you're building your personas out.

00;09;24;02 - 00;09;47;21

Your ideation is all about understanding, which like creative concepts and creative backlog to serve to those personas. Briefing axes, the translation layer you create, you evaluate, you launch. Ultimately you analyze How did everything do to make sure we're investing our money in the right way. So what I'd like to do now is get into some of these examples.

00;09;47;23 - 00;10;12;09

So the way that I'm going to structure this is within each of those buckets. That's how we'll get into our examples, honestly. And then if you have questions. So I in along the way. So let's start with our research bucket here. Now, I'm not as in-depth as Sarah has here. I'm more so given the general context, what you can start to look at and when we're starting to build personas, I can narrow it down to like six basic questions that we want to start to answer in two different buckets.

00;10;12;12 - 00;10;30;21

So what that means is the first bucket is what do you know to be true about the brand you're working with or the brand you work for? So what I'm looking for are like the brand value props and selling points we know to be true understanding past characteristics and historical data within that accounts or anywhere else where you can collect that information.

00;10;30;24 - 00;10;46;14

So here is we're able to say, I know this to be true, let's build this out as a persona. But then the second bucket is what are people saying about you at the end of the day? And what that might mean is we might explore social channels, We might actually look at comments to see what people are running into.

00;10;46;21 - 00;11;08;16

We'll look into different reviews to understand what's going on. And we're going to look at a tagged post to understand like what look and feels are ultimately crushing it at the end of the day, Right? So these are ways that I can start to build, but something that I like to do, I don't know. Those are if people are with us in Canada, remember The that was easy bucket and this is where I start to throw a workplace sweep files into the mix.

00;11;08;16 - 00;11;28;09

Right? Because exactly what I mentioned earlier, the swipe files are so easy to explore either competitors look through your own data to basically build like a Pinterest board that's so pretty to get what you need. So everyone has those examples. So a really nice piece to add to your tech stack for your research. And then the second thing are motion reports.

00;11;28;16 - 00;11;46;04

So motion comes in is when you want to look at your own ads with the data associated with it to understand what's truly worked. So this allows you to start to build out who is the people that we are building these for now with research in mind. And we built our personas out, the next thing we want to do is i.t.

00;11;46;09 - 00;12;03;27

Ideation can range from when whoever you chat with, I'm going to keep it nice and easy and the way I'm going to define it is what is the look and feel? We need to pair up with the persona that we want to go after. So when we're talking about ideation, it's sounds weird for me to say this, but this is like the archaic version at the of the day.

00;12;03;28 - 00;12;36;00

You have a shared group chat and tourism ads in there, or you have a spreadsheet with your competitors. You got all that going on, right? But what we can really easily do is start to leverage for plays discovery feature here, right? So Zac has spoken about the Discovery piece and why this is so nice is based on whatever industry, the brand you work for or the brand you're working with is, you can really easily search for something like candles or compost or wherever you play, so you can start to understand what other people loving related to the specific concept.

00;12;36;05 - 00;13;04;20

And then now you have your inspiration to match up with the persona at the end of the day. So that's how ideation becomes really and easy for playing. Right now we've done the work of building our personas. We've done the work of now matching up look and feels with those personas. Now the task at hand starts to become How do we translate all of this like best information into a nice brief that our creative team can easily execute upon?

00;13;04;26 - 00;13;29;13

So we go ahead and scale those accounts. So when I'm talking about briefing, what we really want to keep in mind are different buckets. We can start to understand like I've been mentioning, like those personas, the value, props, what our goals are and that kind of stuff. And why again, I'll I'll for play front end forward here is that we're looking at that briefing system so briefing I don't want to just repeat what Zach was saying like you did a much better job than I did here.

00;13;29;19 - 00;13;50;12

But ultimately, when we're talking briefing, you're going to have what you need. At the end of the day, you can list out the personas, value, props, hypotheses and goals. You can start to understand your format. You can start to understand your hook problems, solution, all the actions, all of that good stuff, and it becomes a nice and shareable link that you go ahead and toss to other people.

00;13;50;14 - 00;14;14;23

I know I'm not giving you love, Zach. I'm sorry I made it beforehand. The launch is through it. I missed the episode earlier today, so briefing makes it easier there. But the other I wanted to dive into is like briefs are great for building net new concepts, but they're also really helpful when you're thinking about iterations too. So when I'm thinking about iteration briefing, where I start here is similar to Morella.

00;14;14;29 - 00;14;31;20

I have data points in mind that I ultimately care about, whether it be the engagement side or the bottom of our funnel. So for this example, I'm going to really hone in on hook rate. You heard Morella talk about this a little bit too, but when I'm talking about hook rate, I have this fancy report with emotion right?

00;14;31;22 - 00;14;57;05

So what we're doing is we're comparing our thumb stock ratios or our hook rates to our click through rates. So who's clicking or going to the website and why? I really like this report is because it's easy to see low hanging fruit. So what I mean is this version that circled right here, let's walk through it together. Folks like what we see here is a much lower stop ratio in comparison to the rest of the group, but a higher click through rate in comparison to the rest of the group.

00;14;57;07 - 00;15;18;06

So what this is telling us, it's telling us not too many people stopping their scrolls, but those who are stopping their scrolls, what are they doing? They're going where we want them to go. At the end of the day, for those who are intense on the media buying side, feel free to swap. Yes, that conversion rate. So why this become super helpful is I can ultimately build a hypothesis around this for my iterations.

00;15;18;09 - 00;15;40;17

So what that can look like a really light brief. So what that means is my hypothesis is that for this specific creative, I want to increase my thumb stop ratio so more people stopping their roles, but I want to maintain a similar click through rate or conversion rate because the overall message is absolutely smashing it. So that means creative team, let's do two new versions.

00;15;40;17 - 00;15;58;04

I want one new version for my Scented with Love option that actually has an updated first 3 seconds in thumbnail, nice and easy and a second version that has an updated thumbnail. Really nice and easy. So that way we're leveraging data to ultimately produce new creatives that are going to allow us to scale in the way that we need to.

00;15;58;06 - 00;16;20;27

So that's an example of how we go from like new concepts into the iterative concepts. So you have that continuous flywheel. Okay, folks, well I am not going to give enough love to the section. This is a section that's like needs its own time. The content creation and launch is literally making it diving into and whatever process you want to follow, there is may I along the way?

00;16;20;29 - 00;16;43;23

But where I'm going to focus here is on my creative analysis instead of that creation. So what that means is like, we've built hypotheses out to be able to say like, okay, we want to increase the sum stop ratio and maintain our click through rates. So by building nice and straightforward hypothesis, it becomes so much easier to say, Did we do a good job or did we not do a good job?

00;16;43;25 - 00;17;06;19

So let's get to another example team. What This means is in this specific screenshot that I have a report, let me walk through three three different examples. The first thing is on the far right in this brownish red color, let's call this our control group. It's the version of the creative that's been lived the entire time in the ad account and the one we've decided to make changes of right.

00;17;06;21 - 00;17;26;26

That we have. Our V2 in our view is just the thumbnail and three second change. And then right beside that we have our P three. That's just our thumbnail change all side by side. And why this becomes helpful is when we have our control group like so we can visually see how did our version two in version perform.

00;17;26;28 - 00;17;48;06

So when I'm looking for validation of if I did well or not, what it means is that my control group, I wanted to see a higher thumbs up ratio and a consistent conversion or click through rate. And in my version to what do I see checkmark, I accomplish both. So that means my thumb stop got more people to stop their scroll and I maintained a consistent click through rate.

00;17;48;08 - 00;18;09;18

So I'm doing my job. Let's continue to lean into this and let's do our thing. Whereas beside this, what I have is only three is just the thumbnail change. And what's happened here is that it seems to be quite clickbait. We're getting more people to stop in that first 3 seconds, but it's a story that's not necessarily resonating with what's on the landing page and ultimately the purchasing power.

00;18;09;20 - 00;18;30;06

So this is how we can start to see like version two is true, version three is false and, informs the upcoming creative sprints that I ultimately want to run. So that's how it starts to build. And then the biggest thing I'll do here is like highlight a couple of other people from the community. So that will encounter. Like, do you want to track any of this information that's coming to motion?

00;18;30;06 - 00;18;50;14

Zoom? But you can also see it in spreadsheets and templates that you'll have here. And then the last thing that I'll note is on the creative analysis side, I focus on just like validation of, Hey, thumbs up ratio, Did it work well or not, but this can extrapolate in so many different ways. You can start to look into your influencers performance.

00;18;50;16 - 00;19;10;25

I have. I know it's a little bit harder to see, but I have my trusty transformers. You're going to have who you have and you can start to see who are you investing your money in. And you can also extrapolate this to things like, Do I have a creative problem or do I have a landing page problem that comes to mind so you can understand, diagnose and get everybody moving in the same direction.

00;19;10;28 - 00;19;29;05

So that's another example of how the thing starts to evolve. But in summary, these are the steps that you want to follow. Like I said, the deck will be made available, but the other pieces is like, I know I speak super fast and I know this is a lot of content, so if you aren't following this tomorrow, it's not the end of the world.

00;19;29;07 - 00;19;49;01

Where I like to focus is let's try to start building out hypotheses for whenever we're testing something new and let's try to build a structure where we can actually say like where we write or where we wrong validation of true or false with those hypotheses that you'll be able to track your progress over time to see if you're getting better as an individual, but also if you're making the company some more money.

00;19;49;03 - 00;19;59;08

So that's how you can take those easy steps to make that come to life. But yeah, everybody, without further ado, that is what we have going on.

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Building Creative Strategy Platform Synergies

Evan Lee

What you'll learn

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